Somehow or another I found that there is a Historic car racing club event at Sandown Park on the coming weekend, with free entry on Friday 8 November. I haven't been to a car race for ages so thought this might be good. There have been a few bits of interest in the lead up so I will start off the report now.
The beginning was the difficulty I had finding the schedule for the Friday. An email to the Event Secretary fixed that: it seems this is a practice day with the various classes having a few 15 minute sessions through the day. My expectation is that it will be pretty low key driving, but I should be able to wander through the pits and check the cars up close.
A second point of interest is how to get there on public transport. The first offering by Google Maps (at about 5pm) was:
- Walk to Prahran Station (1.4 km)
- Catch a train to Richmond (passing through South Yarra)
- Catch another train to Sandown Park (passing through South Yarra)
- Walk 500m to the event.
Interestingly at 0600 the sequence is rather different:
- Cross the road and catch a tram to Flinders St
- Catch a train to Sandown Park
- Walk 500m to the event.
Assuming that the former is more applicable to the time I am travelling I wonder why the app doesn't offer something like:
- Walk to South Yarra Station (1.6 km)
- Catch a train to Sandown Park;
- Walk 500m to the event.
I shall check again on the day, but the app's first suggestion seems like a distant 3rd preference to me. I decided that the third option was the go and wandered off about 0900 hrs. The trains are very long (the first image is from Sandown Park: South Yarra is much more urban).
Going through a rather grungy underpass from the platform to the street the decor related to both motor racing ...
... and horse racing.
A view from the grandstand. The horse racing track seems a long way from the grandstand - presumably to protect the jockeys from furious punters when an odds on favourite has finished 25 lengths back.
The view from Google Earth with the motor tracing track marked in red.
One of the sets of cars heads out to do a few laps. They had a wide variety of cars in each session, but they seemed to usually do about the same speeds.
A couple of historic cars heading off to marshalling. As I had hoped I could wander anywhere I wished - at least in the grandstand area.
A couple of really historic cars, not heading out at this stage.
A different spelling, and the original -
Graham Hill - rarely drove Minis.
This map was on the side of an MGB GT. I don't know if it was one of the cars which made the journey depicted in the map but 1 of them at least was sent to Australia at the end. Here is
a link to their blog: it is 102 days long, so I suggest only read on NBN! (Update: a neighbour, who drives a soft top MGB knows the car and believes it, and the owners, did the trip!)
On the track.
You might have noted the rather cloudy sky: it is Melbourne after all. It started to spit with rain after I had been there for an hour and while interesting to wander in the pits the track 'action' was not very exciting and I did have things I wanted to do at home.
So I headed off. I was walking on the outside of the track and noticed an open gate leading to the spot marked by an arrow. This gave a view down the main straight and a few bends, which looked more interesting (or at least different. Unfortunately one needed a pass to be in there and I was very politely requested to go forth and multiply.
It is worth noting for future reference that Google Maps did not handle the train travel at all well. On the way out it wanted me to change trains at Caulfield (appearing to think I was on a different service to that I was on). The view of the areas we went through was interesting. Caulfield - which I think of as upmarket was a graffitied concrete jungle while Carnegie - reported in a story in The Age as having a very bad reputation - was very well endowed with trees and gardens.
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